June 21 Letters From An American

 Heather Cox Richardson shared this on June 21, 2024:

Sixty years ago today, on June 21, 1964, twenty-year-old Andrew Goodman mailed a postcard to his parents in New York City. He had arrived in Meridian, Mississippi, the day before to work with Michael Schwerner, a 24-year-old former New York social worker, and James Chaney, a 21-year-old Black man from Meridian, to register Black voters in what became known as Freedom Summer. 

“Dear Mom and Dad,” Goodman wrote. “I have arrived safely in Meridian Mississippi. This is a wonderful town and the weather is fine. I wish you were here. The people in this city are wonderful and our reception was very good. All my love, Andy.” 

Mississippi had become a focal point for voter registration because fewer than 7% of Black Mississippians were registered, but members of the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, dedicated to preserving segregation and to keeping Black people from voting, intended to stop the people challenging their power. They had come to loathe Schwerner— like Goodman, a Jewish man— who along with his wife, Rita, had taken over the field office of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in Meridian and had begun grassroots organizing. 

At meetings, Ku Klux Klan members routinely talked about killing Schwerner, but without authorization from the Klan’s state leader, Sam Bowers, they held off. Several weeks before Goodman arrived in Mississippi, they got that authorization. 

On June 21, Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman set out to investigate the recent burning of a church whose leaders had agreed to participate in voter registration, an arson that, unbeknownst to them, was committed by the same Klan members who had received authorization to kill Schwerner. 

After the three men left the burned church, Deputy Sheriff Cecil Ray Price stopped their car, arrested Schwerner for speeding, and held Chaney and Goodman under suspicion that they were the ones who had burned the church. Once night had dropped, after they paid the speeding ticket and left the Philadelphia, Mississippi, jail, Price followed them, stopped them, ordered them into his car, and then took them down a deserted road and turned them over to two carloads of his fellow terrorists. They beat the men, murdered them, and buried them in an earthen dam that was under construction.

Aside from the murderers, no one knew where the three men had gone. Their fellow CORE workers had begun calling jails and police stations as soon as they didn’t turn up according to schedule, but no one told them where the men were. By June 22 the men’s friends had gotten FBI agents from New Orleans to join the search. On June 23 the agents found the station wagon the men had been driving, still smoldering from an attempt to burn it.

Norman Rockwell's "Southern Justice (Murder in Mississippi)" depiction of the murders of  Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and  Andrew Goodman

As the agents searched—turning up 8 murdered Black men, but not the three they were looking for— President Lyndon B. Johnson, who as Senate majority leader had wrestled the Civil Rights Act of 1957 through Congress and who had pushed hard for a stronger civil rights law since becoming president in November 1963, harnessed the growing outrage over the missing men. 

The House had passed a civil rights bill in February 1964, but southern segregationist Democrats in the Senate filibustered it from March until June 18, when news stations covered the story of hotel owner James Brock pouring acid into a whites-only swimming pool at the Monson Motor Lodge in St. Augustine, Florida, after Black and white people jumped into the water together. The water diluted the acid and the swimmers were not injured, but law enforcement arrested them. Seeing a white man pour acid into a swimming pool to drive out Black people created such outrage that senators abandoned their opposition to the measure.

On June 19, Republican Everett Dirksen (R-IL), the Senate minority leader, managed to deliver enough Republican votes to Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D-MT) to break the filibuster. The Senate passed the bill and sent their version back to the House. Johnson used the popular rage over the three missing voting rights workers to pressure the House to pass the bill, and it did.

Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law on July 2.

Just before he wrote his name, Johnson addressed the American people on television. Tying the new law to the upcoming anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, he noted that “those who founded our country knew that freedom would be secure only if each generation fought to renew and enlarge its meaning…. Americans of every race and color have died in battle to protect our freedom. Americans of every race and color have worked to build a nation of widening opportunities. Now our generation of Americans has been called on to continue the unending search for justice within our own borders.”

Johnson celebrated that the bill had bipartisan support of more than two thirds of the lawmakers in Congress and that it enjoyed the support of “the great majority of the American people.” “[M]ost Americans are law-abiding citizens who want to do what is right,” he said. “My fellow citizens, we have come now to a time of testing. We must not fail.”

Those opposed to Black equality saw the passage of the Civil Rights Act as a call to arms. On July 16, two weeks after Johnson signed the bill and a little more than three weeks after Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner disappeared and while they were still missing, Arizona senator Barry Goldwater strode across the stage at the Republican National Convention to accept the party’s nomination for president. To thunderous applause, he told delegates that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And…moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” The votes of the delegates from South Carolina, the state that launched the Civil War in defense of American slavery, were the ones that put his nomination over the top.

On August 4 the bodies of the missing men were found in the dam near Philadelphia, Mississippi.

It turned out that Deputy Sheriff Price, who had arrested Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman, and his boss, Sheriff Lawrence A. Rainey, were members of the Ku Klux Klan. Price had alerted his fellow Klansman Edgar Ray Killen that he had the three men in custody, and Killen called the local Klan together to attack the men when they got out of jail. Then Price dropped the three civil rights workers into their hands. 

While the state of Mississippi would not prosecute, claiming insufficient evidence, in January 1965 a federal grand jury indicted 18 men for their participation in the murders. The Ku Klux Klan members, who were accustomed to running their states as they saw fit, did not believe they would be punished. An infamous photograph caught Price and Rainey laughing during a hearing after their federal arraignment on charges of conspiracy and violating the civil rights of the murdered men. 

Ultimately, a jury found seven of the defendants guilty. Killen walked free because in addition to being a Klan leader, he was also a Baptist minister, and a member of the jury would not convict a minister. Price was convicted and sentenced to six years in prison (he served four). Rainey, who was not at the murder scene, was found not guilty, but he lost his job and his marriage and blamed the FBI and the media for ruining his life.

Voters in the 1964 election backed Johnson’s vision of the country, rejecting Goldwater by a landslide. Ominously, though, Goldwater won his own state of Arizona and five states of the Deep South—Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. The Republican Party had begun to court the segregationist southern Democrats.

In 1980, Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan spoke in Philadelphia, Mississippi, on August 3, sixteen years almost to the day after the bodies of the three men had been found.

“I believe in states' rights,” he said. “I believe in people doing as much as they can for themselves at the community level and at the private level. And I believe that we've distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended in the constitution to that federal establishment. And if I do get the job I'm looking for, I'm going to devote myself to trying to reorder those priorities and to restore to the states and local communities those functions which properly belong there.”

In January 2004 a multiracial group of citizens who wanted justice for the 1964 murders met with Mississippi state attorney general Jim Hood and local district attorney Mark Duncan, as well as with Andrew Goodman's mother Carolyn Goodman and brother David Goodman, to ask Hood to reopen the case. In January 2005 a grand jury indicted Killen, who had organized the Klan to go after Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman, for their murder. 

On June 21, 2005, a jury found the 80-year-old Killen guilty of manslaughter. 

He died in prison six years ago.

—

Notes:

https://andrewgoodman.org/news-list/civics-for-change-freedom-summer-1964/

https://www.justice.gov/crt/case-document/micheal-schwerner-james-chaney-andrew-goodman

https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/july-2-1964-remarks-upon-signing-civil-rights-bill

https://ap.gilderlehrman.org/node/175859

https://www.npr.org/2014/06/13/321380585/remembering-a-civil-rights-swim-in-it-was-a-milestone

https://www.nytimes.com/1964/06/19/archives/text-of-goldwater-speech-on-rights.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20200521120444/https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis64.htm#1964cra64h

https://neshobademocrat.com/stories/ronald-reagans-1980-neshoba-county-fair-speech,49123

https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/local/journeytojustice/2018/01/12/klansman-who-orchestrated-mississippi-burning-killings-dies-prison/1028454001/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/daily/may98/goldwaterspeech.htm

My family from Galveston TX and the beach

 The beach I'm most familiar with is in Galveston TX.

(From a post in 2013...)

My father was born there in 1914.
His father, George Elmore Rogers, Sr., built the house my father was born in, and they lived there many years. (See george-elmore-rogers-sr HERE)

House built by George Rogers Sr. in Galveston, TX

My grandfather's mother, Bettie Bass Rogers, lived in Galveston the later part of her life (from before the storm of 1900 till her death in 1924).  (I featured my family survivors of the Storm of 1900 HERE)

My father's mother, Ada Phillips Swasey Rogers, was raised in Galveston. Here's a quick summary of her family who lived there as well.

Her mother, Zulieka Phillips Swasey had been raised as an orphan living with her mother's sisters in Galveston during and following the Civil War. (See this blog posting on Zulieka Phillips Swasey's birthday.)  Zulieka and Ada Phillips were brought up in their aunts' homes, probably that of  Elizabeth Pulsifer Granger Sweet or with their other aunt, Lucy Ellen Granger Wakeley.  I have some letters written in the household by children, which don't describe clearly who was where.




But what of the time when Galveston was the largest city in Texas?  My family first came there before the Civil War. 

The Handbook of Texas History (see below) talks about an epidemic of Yellow Fever in 1867, affecting three fourths of the population.  "Galveston nonetheless surged ahead and ranked as the largest Texas city in 1870 with 13,818 people and also in 1880 with 22,248 people."

Incidentally I can't find anyone in my family tree who died in 1867.  But of the relatives living in Galveston at that time, there are a lot who don't even have a date of their death.  That has little meaning, but the conjecture is that if 20 people died in a day, (see below) it was probably difficult to keep track of who they were.

Also many people would pass through an international port from far across the oceans.  Many of the German settlers in Texas came through Galveston.  So my mother's grandfather's guardians might have walked the streets around 1870 as they first learned English before going towards Hillsboro, Texas. I have no idea who brought my great grandfather from Germany to Texas, nor even the ship he arrived on nor the year.





Source:
Handbook of Texas History online 

GALVESTON, TEXAS. The city of Galveston is on Galveston Island two miles offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, at 29°18' north latitude and 94°47' west longitude, in Galveston County. It is fifty miles from Houston and is the southern terminal point of Interstate Highway 45. The island is a part of the string of sand barrier islands along the coastal zone of Texas. On its eastern end where the city stands the currents of Galveston Bay maintain a natural harbor which historically provided the best port site between New Orleans and Veracruz.

 Karankawa Indians used the island for hunting and fishing, and it was the probable location of the shipwreck landing of Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca in 1528. José de Evia^qv, who charted the Texas coast in 1785, named Galveston Bay in honor of Bernardo de Gálvez, the viceroy of Mexico. Later mapmakers applied the name Galveston to the island. Louis Aury established a naval base at the harbor in 1816 to support the revolution in Mexico, and from this point Aury, Francisco Xavier Mina, and Henry Perry launched an unsuccessful attack against the Spanish in Mexico.

When Aury returned with his ships after leaving Perry and Mina on the Mexican coast he found Galveston occupied by Jean Laffite, who had set up a pirate camp called Campeachy to dispose of contraband and provide supplies for the freebooters. In 1821, however, the United States forced Laffite to evacuate.

Mexico designated Galveston a port of entry in 1825 and established a small customshouse in 1830. During the Texas Revolution the harbor served as the port for the Texas Navy and the last point of retreat of the Texas government. Following the war Michel B. Menard and a group of investors obtained ownership of 4,605 acres at the harbor to found a town. After platting the land in gridiron fashion and adopting the name Galveston, Menard and his associates began selling town lots on April 20, 1838. The following year the Texas legislature granted incorporation to the city of Galveston with the power to elect town officers.

Galveston grew on the strength of the port; cotton moved outward, and farming supplies and immigrants came in. The city served as a transfer point for oceangoing vessels and coastal steamers which ran a route through Galveston Bay and Buffalo Bayou to Houston. The construction of the Galveston, Houston and Henderson Railroad, which built a bridge to the island in 1860, strengthened the link between the two towns.

Business collapsed, however, when the Civil War brought a blockade of the port by Union ships and a brief occupation of the town by federal troops. The dramatic battle of Galveston on New Year's Day, 1863, ended the occupation, but the port remained isolated and served mainly as a departure point for small blockade runners. Following the war Galveston quickly recovered; northern troops were stationed in the city, and a depleted state demanded the trade goods denied by the blockade and the war effort.

With so many susceptible people present, however, the city in 1867 suffered one of its worst onslaughts of yellow fever, which affected about three-fourths of the population and killed at a rate of twenty per day. This disease, a malady of most southern ports, did not cease to be a threat until the institution of rigid quarantines after 1873.

Galveston nonetheless surged ahead and ranked as the largest Texas city in 1870 with 13,818 people and also in 1880 with 22,248 people. It had the first structure to use electric lighting, the Galveston Pavilion; the first telephone; and the first baseball game in the state. The Galveston News, founded in 1842, is the state's oldest continuing daily newspaper. The Galveston buildings, especially those designed by architect Nicholas J. Clayton, were among the finest of the time; in 1881 the city won the site of the state medical school in a statewide election; and the Grand Opera House was built in 1894 and presented the best theatrical productions in Texas. The opera house was restored as a modern performing arts hall in the 1980s.
In spite of efforts to maintain trade supremacy by improving port facilities and contributing to the construction of railways running to the city, Galveston business leaders saw their town slip to fourth place in population by 1900. Galveston acquired a coast guard station in 1897 which still operated in the 1990s and a small military base, Fort Crockett (1897–1957), but other cities such as Dallas acquired transcontinental rail connections and a growth in manufacturing establishments. At a time when Houston, Beaumont, and Port Arthur benefitted from the oil discoveries of the early twentieth century, Galveston had to put its energy into a recovery from the nation's worst natural disaster, the Galveston hurricane of 1900. The island lay in the pathway of hurricanes coursing across the Gulf of Mexico and suffered at least eleven times in the nineteenth century. The Galveston hurricane of 1900, with wind gusts of 120 miles per hour, flooded the city, battered homes and buildings with floating debris, and killed an estimated 6,000 people in the city. Another 4,000 to 6,000 people died on the nearby coast. For future protection the city and county constructed a seventeen-foot seawall on the Gulf side of the island, raised the grade level, and built an all-weather bridge to the mainland. The development of other ports by means of the ship channels, alternative sites for business and manufacturing provided by other modes of transportation, and notoriety because of hurricanes destined the island city to medium size. In 1980 it had a population of 61,902 and ranked twenty-ninth in the state.

Around 1900 business leaders redesigned the city government into the first commission form in the country (see COMMISSION FORM OF CITY GOVERNMENT). Their idea was to have the governor of the state appoint a mayor and four commissioners. Each commissioner would control a specific function of government-finance, police and fire control, water and sewage, streets and public improvements. Since the original plan was patently undemocratic, it was subsequently revised to provide for the election of the officers. The commission plan was somewhat popular in the years before World War I but faded in the 1920s in favor of the city-manager plan. Galveston, however, continued with the commission government until 1960, when it too changed to a city-manager form.
During the years between the world wars Galveston, under the influence of Sam and Rosario (Rose) Maceo, exploited the prohibition of liquor and gambling by offering illegal drinks and betting in nightclubs and saloons. This, combined with the extensive prostitution which had existed in the port city since the Civil War, made Galveston the sin city of the Gulf. The citizens tolerated and supported the illegal activities and took pride in being "the free state of Galveston." In 1957, however, Attorney General Will Wilson with the help of Texas Rangers^qv shut down bars such as the famous Ballinese Room, destroyed gambling equipment, and closed many houses of prostitution. Between 1985 and 1988 Galveston voters in nonbinding referenda defeated proposals to legalize casino gambling, although proponents argued that gambling could promote the local economy. Pursuant to a law enacted by the Texas legislature, however, gambling on board cruise ships embarking from Galveston was expected to boost business activity in the wharf district beginning in September 1989.

Galveston has survived on its port, tourism, and the University of Texas Medical Branch^qv. In the later 1900s the Galveston Historical Foundation encouraged historic preservation in the old business area of the Strand and various Victorian homes, which has added to the visitor attractions of the city. The famous Rosenberg Library serves as a circulating library as well as an important repository for archival materials pertaining to the history of Galveston and Texas. The restoration of the nineteenth-century square-rigged vessel, Elissa, in 1975–82 gave Texans their own "Tall Ship" to sail into New York harbor for the celebration of the centennial of the Statue of Liberty. In 2000 the population was 57,247.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: 

Howard Barnstone, The Galveston That Was (New York: Macmillan, 1966). Charles Waldo Hayes, Galveston: History of the Island and the City (2 vols., Austin: Jenkins Garrett, 1974). David G. McComb, Galveston: A History (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986).

Galveston beach with seawall, about 1915

Sharing with Sepia Saturday this week.

Today's quote:

Flowers unfold slowly and gently, bit by bit in the sunshine, and a soul too must never be punished or driven, but unfolds in its own perfect timing to reveal its true wonder and beauty.
            - "The Findhorn Garden," The Findhorn Community

June 20, 2024

 The June Solstice will be with us soon - on the 20th June to be precise. 

Is that precise?

Convention dictates that we think of the solstice as lasting a day, but it doesn't last a second (in the same way that midday doesn't last a second).

The June solstice is the fleeting moment when the sun is overhead the most northerly part of the Earth it ever reaches - the Tropic of Cancer. It is also the moment that the North Pole is titled as much as it ever is towards the sun - and this has big implications for navigating using the sun.

 For a refresher on how to navigate using the Sun, please see this page:

FIND YOUR WAY USING THE SUN

Source: The Natural Navigator

-----------------------

And from an old post of mine in 2013...

Happy Summer Solstice!

This is Panther

This is Muffin, my queen who I raised from a newborn kitten (born on my front porch from a feral mother.)

Unconditional love...?

Neither of these lovelies ever knocked off any of my pottery from a shelf. What considerate furbies they were.

May your shortest night and longest day give you many blessings...surprises, gifts, loving, good health and joy  throughout the whole 24 hours!

Today's Quote:

Cooperation flows more easily when we let go of the necessity to be right all the time.

Sharing with Thankful Thursday

Juneteenth 2024 is tomorrow

 Repost from 2019, with links for 2020 and 2022!

Many of my family members still live in Texas, and it was maybe sometime in my adulthood that I first heard of Juneteenth!

I was really interested (beginning about 10 years ago) in learning about the Texas Reconstruction. They had troubles with acknowledging Black people as free men and women. There were many politicians coming up with ways to keep those who had been enslaved from receiving recognition or education or opportunities...known as Jim Crow laws.

There were also some other people who helped by donating land for schools, as well as land for communities to build on and farms that were available for "truck farming" - where usually the Black farmers would get a portion of the crop that they raised. 

But the actual announcement that the Civil War was over was the cause for Juneteenth...not the actual Emancipation Proclamation which had happened in 1862! 

The Emancipation Proclamation, issued by President Abraham Lincoln on Sep. 22, 1862, announced, “That on the 1st day of January. A.D. 1863, all person held as slaves within any state…in rebellion against the U.S. shall be then, thenceforward and forever free."

Lincoln freed the slaves on New Years Day of 1863. Of course the Confederate leadership didn't share that information with their slaves, or maybe even to the soldiers who were giving their lives for the cause of slavery. My Texas ancestors weren't at all happy with Lincoln becoming President...and I've got a copy of their hand written letters that said as much.

Lee surrendered his Confederate Army on April 9, 1865 at Appomattox Court House. But there wasn't a way that all the various battlefields received that information right away. It wasn't until May 23 near Brownsville, TX that the last battle occurred...known as the Battle of Palmito Ranch.  The news about the Appomattox surrender had finally arrived and many of the soldiers just went home by May 26 when Lt. Gen. E. Kirby Smith's Army of the Trans-Mississippi surrendered at Galveston TX.

"After the Civil War ended in April 1865 most slaves in Texas were still unaware of their freedom. This began to change when Union troops arrived in Galveston. Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger, (Union) commanding officer, District of Texas, from his headquarters in the Osterman building (Strand and 22nd St.), read ‘General Order No. 3’ on June 19, 1865. The order stated “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves.” With this notice, reconstruction era Texas began."

In Texas, Juneteenth was celebrated as the Texas Blacks' first knowledge of Emancipation Day. Until that announcement, the slave owners probably were keeping it secret from the slaves. The slaves in Texas were free for 2-1/2 years and still obeying their owners!

It was first celebrated publicly, then more privately until the mid twentieth century. In 1979 June 19th became a Texas Sate Holiday.

This marker stands in Galveston TX to commemorate Gen. Granger's proclamation as quoted above. The marker was erected in 2014.

Incidentally, my great great great grandparents were Grangers from New England, I wonder if we were related to Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger. (going to Ancestry to see if I can find an ancestor in common. My Granger relations came to Texas from Newburyport, MA and settled in Galveston in 1860.)

And in 2020 who can forget George Floyd?  Here is my post about the rally in Black Mountain for Juneteenth and Black Lives Matter.

Here's another post from the past in 2022, quoted from a Facebook post.  HERE which looks at the history of all slavery throughout the world.

Mifepristone as abortion pill is legal!

 Supreme Court's unanimous decision on  legal option for abortion! 

This is PBS's article released just minutes ago:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously preserved access to a medication that was used in nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S. last year, in the court’s first abortion decision since conservative justices overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago.

The justices ruled that abortion opponents lacked the legal right to sue over the federal Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the medication, mifepristone, and the FDA’s subsequent actions to ease access to it.

The case had threatened to restrict access to mifepristone across the country, including in states where abortion remains legal.

Go to link  above to read details in article by PBS.

June 24 is the 2nd anniversary of the Supremes overturning Roe v. Wade...leading to many difficulties for women in different states over the last 2 years!

Rumi the poet and his life

 How Rumi became one of the world's most popular writers. Here.

Open Culture newsletter posted this about the poet...

The Middle East is hardly the world’s most harmonious region, and it only gets more fractious if you add in South Asia and the Mediterranean. But there’s one thing on which many residents of that wide geographical span can agree: Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī. One might at first imagine that a thirteenth-century poet and mystical philosopher who wrote in Persian, with occasional forays into Turkish, Arabic, and Greek, would be a niche figure today, if known at all. In fact, Rumi, as he’s commonly known, is now one of the most popular writers in not just the Middle East but the world; English reinterpretations of his verse have even made him the best-selling poet in the United States.

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Today's quote:

Lyndon Johnson said when signing Civil Rights Law: “We believe all men are entitled to the blessings of liberty. Yet millions are being deprived of those blessings … because of the color of their skin. The reasons are deeply imbedded in history and tradition and the nature of man. We can understand — without rancor or hatred — how this happened, but it cannot continue. … Our constitution … forbids it. The principles of our freedom forbid it. Morality forbids it. And [now] the law … forbids it.”

Video of astronauts in Appolo 8 when Earthrise photo was taken.

 In honor of Bill Anders, who took  the first photo of the earth from space, Emergence Magazine is sharing their film made by the astronauts on that early trip to the moon. Bill Anders died recently at age 90.

EarthriseEarthrise

I'm sorry, but blogger is doing that double speak now when I make a link. But press the one that's colored and go to the film

Earthrise, by Bill Anders

The short film...

Earthrise tells the story of the first image captured of the Earth from space in 1968. Told solely by the Apollo 8 astronauts, the film recounts their experiences and memories and explores the beauty, awe, and grandeur of the Earth against the blackness of space. This iconic image had a powerful impact on the astronauts and the world, offering a perspective that transcended national, political, and religious boundaries. Told 50 years later, Earthrise compels us to remember this shift and to reflect on the Earth as a shared home.

Another Monday morning

We're all tired of me being sick and tired.

So another beautiful June day says hello and I'm determined to be out in it just as much as possible.

Have a beautiful flower!

I had raging fever last night, and it wouldn't break with Tylenol (which usually knocks it down) but it kept going up. So a couple of ibuprofen were added to the mix, and many sweaty hours of sleep transpired.

I got up and needed desperately to shower! Even if I'm the only one smelling myself, there's no way those wet clothes were not reeking! OK, enough.

I have an appointment that canceled this morning...rescheduled to July.

I now have an appointment to recertify my status to live in a government subsidized apartment with lower rent. We are actually a "rural area" under the Dept. of Agriculture, so I hope nobody in DC thinks to cut our funding. It makes many things possible for this old lady, I'll tell you! I worked in many institutions that served the low income population in Florida. I felt really badly how their healthcare was minimally distributed. Sure hope I never need long term care it here.

I just saw this on Daily Om...along with 6 other healthy methods to avoid ill health. This is one I haven't tried yet:

If you feel ill health coming on, brew a wellness elixir. Simmer three sliced lemons, one teaspoon freshly grated ginger, one clove of freshly minced garlic, and one quarter teaspoon of cayenne pepper in five cups of water until the lemons are soft and pale. Strain a portion into a mug and add honey by tablespoons until you can tolerate the taste. Drinking this potent mixture of antibacterial, antiviral, and antifungal ingredients three times each day can slow your symptoms down and even prevent you from developing a full-blown illness.

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I'm always interested in alternative health care methods...though I do go first to medical care.

------------------------------

The good news today!

My youngest granddaughter's LaCrosse team won the State Championships, Division One! That's the state of Ohio.  Here her proud parents share her team's victory!

Today's quote:

"You don't get to choose how you're going to die, or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. Now." ~ Joan Baez

Trying to understand how those people can still support him...

The Movement we Need

 A  great Substack book that has just started, by Starhawk, "The Movement we Need." She plans to write and publish it in this way.

I'll just give a few interesting quotes:

With the alt-right telling people “Your resentful emotions make you a heroic defender of freedom”, and a left telling people “No matter how good you think you are, you are inherently racist, sexist, selfish and your privilege is oppressing others all over the world”, it's not surprising that many disaffected people are drawn to the right instead of the left. This is a simplification, of course, and there are many voices on the left that are calling for a movement that is inviting, affirming and empowering. I strongly believe that we have the capacity to create such a movement, and to do it skillfully. But to do so, we must organize people as they are, not as we think they ought to be.

Human beings, regardless of background and culture, have some core emotional needs that are important to recognize. Movements that succeed find ways to meet these needs that are inclusive and empowering. Many of them are easy to meet in negative ways, and to understand the success of right wing movements we must take an honest look at the ways that they do meet people's core needs. I will outline the five needs that I think are most key to organizing, and as these posts continue I'll go deeper into the ways we can address each one. Those five core needs are safety, belonging, value, agency and meaning.

The five core needs: safety, belonging, value, agency, and meaning, can be met in negative ways that exclude and disempower one group of people to benefit another, or in positive ways that are liberating. empowering and connecting. 

Safety: The safety we strive for within our movements is emotional safety. As activists, we can't and don't always want to assure physical safety.  We sometimes ask people to do physically and legally dangerous things in the furtherance of justice. But we do want to create a sense of emotional safety, a confidence that we are involved with others who care for us, will look out for us and will consider our interests as well as their own. We might frame this as solidarity.

                  Belonging: Humans are social animals, and we need to feel a sense of belonging, to know that we are part of something bigger than ourselves. Traditionally that might be family, community, clan, tribe, nation, but it may also be political orientation, fan club, religious or spiritual group, or any other collection of people we can identify with. Ideally, we long to be part of something important, something that furthers our values in the world.

                  Value: As well as being part of something, we are also unique individuals.  We have a powerful need to feel seen and valued, for the fullness of who we are as human beings.  We resent being placed in categories or boxes, slapped with labels that define us more narrowly than we experience ourselves. Successful regenerative movements contest categorizations, and fight against prejudice of all sorts: racism, sexism, homophobia, and all the isms. We're often very good identifying and calling out instances where they appear overtly or subtly. But we also need to get good at finding ways to truly see and value each one of us as fully rounded human beings, not just as representatives of some particular identity.

                  Agency:  There are many different sorts of power in this world but one definition I like is “the ability to get what you want done”. We strive for that kind of power, and we have a strong need to feel a sense of agency, that we can make choices and decisions and take actions that have an impact on the world around us. Ideally, that's a positive impact. we each want to make our own valued contribution to the community we belong to, and to its goals and projects. But thwarted, we'll settle for a negative impact, as opposed to feeling no sense of impact at all. When I was practicing as a therapist, I had a client who had recently been released from a long prison term. In jail, she had often gotten into fights. When we discussed why, she said “I would just start to feel like I was disappearing, like I wasn't there. I had to lash out and hit somebody just to know that I still exist.”  I often think of her when I hear about some young, disaffected person shooting up a schoolroom or a shopping mall with an AK47.  Is this a desperate, horrific attempt to feel some sense of power and impact in the world?

                  Meaning:  We also have a powerful drive to find meaning and purpose in the world. The human mind has evolved to recognize and create patterns. We look out into a field of stars and see figures, heroes, deities, animals.  We want the world to make sense.  Too often it doesn't. Injustice surrounds us, some of it human created, some of it just the function of bad luck or circumstance. When we find or impose a pattern, we feel a sense of control and relief from some of the existential anxiety of being a mortal, vulnerable body in a dangerous world.  We look for patterns in our own lives, and we want to believe that our lives mean something, that we can act in pursuance of our deepest values and bring reality closer to our ideals.

Extremist movements play on these needs very effectively.  Right-wing news media inflame people's sense of fear and insecurity, painting the world as a threatening place, and then promise them safety, offering a ‘strong man’ who can save them. They offer a sense of belonging the easy way—by identifying and vilifying an out-group that does not belong.  People gain a sense of value by partaking in the group (although that value is conditional.) Identifying with the strong man, people feel a sense of power, however illusory, often bolstered with the possession of weapons and fantasied or real acts of violence.  Finally, they wrap it all up with a powerful sense of purpose—take our country back, make America great again. 

              To meet these needs in empowering and inclusive ways, a regenerative movement needs to be strategic, long term, and above all, welcoming.  To make the profound changes we see are needed, we need a broad-based powerful movement, a big tent that can shelter a broad diversity of people and groups.

                  This is a terrifying and challenging time, but it is also a great time of opportunity.  If we commit ourselves to valuing the inherent worth in every human being, if we identify our core human needs and find positive ways to meet them, if we are willing to organize, educate, and value people as they are, not just as we wish they would be, if we think strategically and plan for the long term, we can build a broad-based, regenerative, welcoming movement that will be an enormous force for positive change. 

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I look forward to reading the next chapters as she writes them. I subscribed to receive them. 

Time for the 'Way-Back-When' machine

  

Let's celebrate the Suffragist Movement! On June 4, 1919 the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing women the right to vote, is passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification.

http://histv.co/1sTycjb

IN 2019 I shared this post about the women working to get the vote in England, with a prompt from Sepia Saturday. These Women Mean Business

Suffragists worked since the 1840s in America to get women the right to vote. It wasn't until 1920 that the required 2/3 of the states ratified the  19th amendment to the constitution.

This is the Timeline of Getting Women the Vote.

Sharing with a new Sepia Saturday prompt...

Women's quarters 2024 - Celia Cruz

 Úrsula Hilaria Celia de la Caridad Cruz Alfonso (21 October 1925 – 16 July 2003), known as Celia Cruz, was a Cuban singer and one of the most popular Latin artists of the 20th century. Cruz rose to fame in Cuba during the 1950s as a singer of guarachas, earning the nickname "La Guarachera de Cuba". In the following decades, she became known internationally as the "Queen of Salsa" due to her contributions to Latin music. She had sold over 10 million copies, making her one of the best-selling Latin music artists.

She began her career in her home country Cuba, earning recognition as a vocalist of the popular musical group Sonora Matancera, a musical association that lasted 15 years (1950–1965). Cruz mastered a wide variety of Afro-Cuban music styles including guaracha, rumba, afro, son and bolero, recording numerous singles in these styles for Seeco Records. 

Her musical legacy is made up of a total of 37 studio albums, as well as numerous live albums and collaborations. Throughout her career, she was awarded numerous prizes and distinctions, including two Grammy Awards and three Latin Grammy Awards. In addition to her prolific career in music, Cruz also made several appearances as an actress in movies and telenovelas. Her catchphrase "¡Azúcar!" ("Sugar!") has become one of the most recognizable symbols of salsa music.

Cruz was touring in Mexico when Fidel Castro seized power at the conclusion of the Cuban Revolution. She returned to Cuba to find her hometown of Havana in turmoil and mostly shut down. Cruz was publicly critical of Castro, a stance that she knew would endanger her career and possibly her freedom, since other critics of the regime were regularly arrested. She also needed money to pay for her ailing mother's medical expenses, and when she was offered a contract to perform for a few months at La Terraza Nightclub in Mexico City, she accepted. Cruz left Cuba on July 15, 1960, not knowing that she would never return to her home country.

In August and September 2002, Cruz underwent surgery due to breast cancer. In November that year, Cruz fell during a concert in Mexico. She was diagnosed with glioma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, and underwent surgery in December. Confident, Cruz said she did not shed one tear and that she was aiming to resume her artistic career. She finished recording her last album, Regalo del Alma. In February, she appeared in public again at the 45th Annual Grammy Awards to receive the award for Best Salsa Album. In March 2003, the US Hispanic network Telemundo paid tribute to her. The event, titled ¡Celia Cruz: Azúcar!, involved figures such as Gloria Estefan, Marc Anthony, La India, Gloria Gaynor and Patti LaBelle among others. This was her last public appearance.

On the afternoon of 16 July 2003, Cruz died at her home in Fort Lee, New Jersey, at the age of 77.

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For more information her awards and her many musical contributions, see the .Wikipedia article Here.

Celia Cruz - Telemundo